Women, Borders, and Mobilities in Latin America

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to arrive at a detailed understanding of the manner by which gender systems are intertwined with the reproduction of borders, and how systems of domination are perpetuated while also creating spaces for resistance and contestation. Employing the perspective of feminist economics, we observe how various industries exploit existing inequities at the border to utilize the low cost of women’s labour to establish factories that precaritise work in extreme ways. Drawing on contributions from gender studies in Latin America to the theorization of human mobilities in borders, our discussion focuses on the relationship between labour markets and gender. In doing so, we emphasize the raw and brutal structural violence exerted on the bodies and lives of women in Latin American border territories, which find its extreme expression in trafficking, sexual harassment, and femicide. These extreme expressions are fostered by daily manifestations of gender violence that cross the boundaries between the public and the private spheres in borderlands: in homes, in public spaces, and in areas supposedly protected by State officials who, however, often are among the violators of women’s human rights.